


1986

by bathandbodyworks



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: 1980s fic, Alternate Universe, And yet, Angst, But also, Coming of Age, Consensual Kissing, Cultural Differences, Falling In Love, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Non-Consensual Kissing, Slurs, and vibing, hotel!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:40:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23839240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bathandbodyworks/pseuds/bathandbodyworks
Summary: It’s 1986.It’s hot, vaguely humid, and New York seems less full of life than ever, especially as Dino continues to control Ash’s every move.But there’s a new boy, staying at the same hotel as him, with a funny accent and wide, brown eyes, and Ash is starting to think he might be a little cute.or,in which Ash think it’s too hot, Eiji thinks Americans are weird, and two boys fall in love.
Relationships: Ash Lynx/Okumura Eiji, Dino Golzine/Ash Lynx
Comments: 96
Kudos: 249





	1. 1986.1

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by a story my mom told me about where when she was 16, her dad took her on vacation to long island, let her off on her own, and she met a boy.
> 
> the events that inspired this took place in 1986, which seems perfect for a banana fish fic, so i decided to keep it 1986, and obviously i wasn’t alive in 1986, and i lack energy for anything but minimal research, so uh plz forgive any factual errors about things that didn’t exist or were already out of use or something along those lines. 
> 
> also!!! very very very much inspired by by [One-Thousand Cranes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18362897/chapters/43479587) by [mad_like_a_lynx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_like_a_lynx/pseuds/mad_like_a_lynx). i would gift it but i don’t even think i’m worthy 😔✊

The air outside the hotel smells like salt and slicked heat. 

There’s lines of steam obscuring the hoods of shiny-black cars, a street light that probably shouldn’t be on flickering endlessly, a hallway door with hinges that squeak every couple of minutes, and Ash watches them all from beside the hotel door that overlooks the parking lot. 

He’s been standing outside for a while, now. He doesn’t feel like going into the hotel room, sick of too wide windows and too small bathrooms, brightly colored hallways that makes his eyes sting, and off-white sheets hiding things Ash doesn’t want to think about. 

Dino’s off fuck knows where, doing whatever the hell it is they temporarily left Manhattan for Long Island to do. He’ll be back by five, probably, most definitely by nightfall, and Ash knows why that happens, but it’s only just past noon and tonight is a long ways away, so unless he intends to spend the rest of the day leaning against a wall, he figures he might as well find something to do. 

There’s a pool in the back, if Ash doesn’t feel like walking the two blocks to the beach, and he sighs as he pushes himself off the wall, sweat sticking his t-shirt to his back. The trek to the pool is too quick, even as Ash is purposefully slow and wide eyed, taking in every person, vehicle, and just slightly tilted painting he sees on his way there. A man at a desk says hello to him, and Ash turns his head just enough towards him to give the kind of smile he knows Dino likes. The man smiles back, and Ash keeps walking. 

There’s not much at the pool when he arrives. A toddler and a young mom in the shallow end of the rectangular pool, a kid spacing out from inside a concession stand. He spares them a glance before settling in a white pool chair under an umbrella, leaning back. He didn’t want to go inside the hotel room for a book, so his only entertainment is tracking the shapes of the clouds above him. He wants to relax, but he’s fidgety, forefinger tapping on the arm rests of the chair, and as the sun continues across the sky, Ash realizes he’s hungry. 

His stomach growls for lunch in retaliation for him skipping breakfast, and Ash almost lets it continue it’s begging indefinitely, but eventually shuffles in the chair until he can get a hand in his pocket, and pulls out a dollar, crumpled and green. 

He walks towards the concession stand, where a boy with dark hair is ordering something. He lines up behind him, still except for the tapping of his foot against concrete. 

The boy in front of him struggles to decide. “Um–“ he says, hand just barely on his chin and eyes darting back and forth, and the employee behind the stand rolls his eyes. 

“Drumsticks are good,” Ash says casually, after a few moments of the boys indecision, and the boy turns towards him with big, brown eyes, and an expression so surprised Ash almost laughs at it. 

“Chicken?” The boy asks, a heavy accent in his throat, but like he’s trying to tone it down. “Like chicken?”

Ash points to the menu. “Like ice cream. A cone with vanilla and chocolate syrup, and dipped in nuts.” 

“Oh!” The boy exclaims, and he turns back towards the attendant, who has a strained smile on his face. “I like vanilla. Drumstick, please.” He puts a dollar on the counter, and the employee hands him his change and a drumstick, and the boy thanks him before turning away. 

“Thank you,” the boy says to Ash, bowing slightly before he stops himself. “I do not know what to buy.”

“I can tell,” Ash replies, teasing a smile that makes the boy blush. He steps forward, ordering an ice cream sandwich that’s larger than he thought it would be before dropping his change into the tip jar. When he turns to go back to his seat, he’s surprised to find that the boy is still standing there, waiting for him. 

“I’m Eiji,” he says, taking a moment to lick at his cone, face lighting up at the taste. “This is very good! Thank you for it.”

“Ash,” he replies with a lift of his head. “And no problem.”

“Like cinders,” Eiji says, carefully, testing out the waters. “I did not know Ash was a name.”

“I’ve never met anyone named Eiji,” Ash responds, teasing. He can see the attendant watching them from the corner of his eye, and Ash steps closer to Eiji. The attendant looks away, vaguely uncomfortable. 

Eiji shrugs, watching Ash get closer. “It is Japanese. My name is not uncommon in my country.” 

“What’s it mean?” Ash asks. It’s only fair. 

Eiji tilts his head like he’s thinking. “Peace,” he says after a moment. “Eiji can mean peace.”

He does look like peace, Ash decides. His face is clean, smooth and unblemished, and he looks happy, despite the ratty hotel they both seem to be staying in. Maybe most hotels in Japan are like this one. Ash has questions, he always does, but he wants to know why Eiji is staying in this hotel, with its worn carpets and tacky decor.

Eiji stares hard at his ice cream, like it’ll twitch and challenge him at any second. Ash watches. “It is always so hard to decide,” Eiji says. “There is much on the menu. So many word.” He looks up, eyes catching on Ashs’s light hair. 

Ash nods in response, glancing around the pool area. The mom and her kid are gone. There’s only two younger kids there now, and no one who looks like they could be related to Eiji.

Eiji looks down at Ash’s sandwich. “What is it?” Eiji asks.

“My sandwich?”

Eiji nods. “Ice cream?”

“An ice cream sandwich.”

“May I try it?” Eiji asks, looking up into Ash’s eyes. 

Ash feels himself jolt a little at Eiji’s words, unexpected as they are. He doesn’t usually let anyone touch his stuff, much less his food, but something about Eiji and his wide eyes makes him want to let him try. 

“It’s sticky,” he says instead, in lieu of an answer, but he sticks the ice cream out towards Eiji anyways, who takes the blunt response as one. 

“It’s okay. I just take bite,” Eiji says quickly, and he leans down towards the end of Ash’s ice cream, the sandwich still in his hand. 

Ash watches, and it almost feels like watching a movie, as Eiji bites down at the end, just inches from Ash’s hand, so close in proximity Ash can feel his breath on his fingers. It would be vaguely sexual, Ash thinks, if Eiji had any idea what he was doing. 

Eiji smiles when he pulls back, licking at his lips. “It is good!” 

Ash feels his eyebrows lift up. “Must be.” 

“Almost as good as drumstick,” he explains, and it’s quiet for a moment. Just breathing and proximity and Ash’s quiet tapping, before: “Have you had mochi?” 

“Nope,” Ash replies, jerking back into himself. “Is it like an ice cream sandwich?”

Eiji shakes his head a little, and Ash hadn’t even realized it, but they’ve started walking, and they’re almost out of the pool area. “It’s squishy, like–“

Eiji makes hand gestures, pushing his fingers to his thumb, “ah, what’s the word, like, like marshmallow! Yes, squishy like marshmallow, but soft and with ice cream inside.” 

Ash considers it for a moment. “They sound good. But I bet you’ve never had _real_ ice cream, like Dairy Queen or something.”

Eiji looks shocked for a moment, plastering fake offense on his face. “Mochi is real ice cream! And it is very good. Much better than silly American cows.”

Ash stares at him for a moment. 

Eiji groans. “What? What is it?”

“We’re going to Dairy Queen,” Ash decides. “You’re getting a classic chocolate-dipped cone, and you will tell me just how much better it is than noshi.”

“Mochi!” Eiji exclaims, and his shoulder brushes against Ash’s, and Ash’s brain freezes for a moment before it resumes. Eiji notices the touch, eyes locked on Ash’s clothed shoulder, before he seems to realize something. 

“Oh! Ah, but, I think Ibe-san are waiting for–“

Ash glances down at his watch. 3pm. At least two hours before Dino is back. “He’ll be fine,” he says, wondering only in the back of his mind who ‘Ibe-san’ is. “I know there’s a Dairy Queen close to the beach. It’s not far.”

Eiji hesitates, glancing back at the pool area they’ve long since left, before catching Ash’s eye, and he nods. “My sister will go crazy if she hears that I run off with some blonde American boy.”

“Then I guess we’ll have to make sure she doesn’t hear about it,” Ash says, sly and deep, and it feels like his brain just _clicks_ with Eiji, this foreign boy he’s just met, who has darker eyes than anyone he’s ever seen and who takes bites of ice cream straight out of the hand of someone he’s known for five minutes. 

Eiji looks down, abashed, for just a moment, and thats all it takes for Ash to remember who he is, and he feels his own smile drop off his face. He’s not just a blonde American boy, with the mom and dad and little brother Eiji’s probably imagining. He shouldn’t be doing this. He shouldn’t be taking this innocent teenager anywhere with him. Corruption flows through him, thick and viscous like sewer sludge bursting through pipes, and he spoils and ruins and plagues anyone he’s with. He‘s rot to people, maggots and disease. But he’s already promised Eiji ice cream, and he decides then and there that that’s it. Ice cream is as far as he can take Eiji. 

Any farther, any more friendship and interactions and silly conversations, gets people hurt. It happened to Shorter, and it’ll happen to Eiji, too. 

“Come on,” he says finally, and Eiji glances back at the pool one more time before walking alongside Ash towards more ice cream and the beach. 

“Okay,” Eiji says, sun light reflecting off his hair and just above Ash’s eyes.

“Okay,” Ash replies, and he wonders what makes Eiji so different. 

%%%

Dino has him up against the wall that night, just hours after he and Eiji peruse boardwalks and drip ice cream on each other and complain about the endless summer heat, and it’s loud and heavy and wet, but Ash doesn’t even pay attention. Just goes through the actions, like he’s picking files out of an old cabinet, until Dino finishes and tells him to clean his _dirty, whore self_ up like he doesn’t see irony.

The shower he takes is longer than usual, and he barely even cleans himself. He mostly just stands there, letting water hit him until his skin is red and itchy, and he only leaves when the water gets so cold he starts shivering. He towels himself off, glancing at himself in the mirror, and biting his lip. The longer he looks, the angrier he gets, irrationality stinging in his gut. He bites harder, and harder still, and he just keeps staring, jade eyes locking onto their own. 

He looks away when he feels so angry he might explode, lets blood fall off his bottom lip and onto to the floor. He smears the red stain with his toe, watching as it glides against blue tile until it’s nothing. It’s erased, just like that. 

He’s not tired when he leaves the shower, but he pretends like he is so Dino will leave him alone. He curls into himself under the covers, just inches away from Dino’s heavy body and thick breaths. 

“One bed is fine,” Dino had said when they arrived to book the room, and the women behind the desk had looked at them a little strangely, but passed it off as father and son being particularly close. 

No one ever notices.

No one ever notices the too long touches and hands against his thigh and he hates that he doesn’t expect them to, that they only look like a boy and his dad. 

But he remembers before Dino scooped him up and said _It’s me or whoring, me or the streets, me or dead in a back alley_ , before Dino took those videos they never bring up but always sit in the back of Ash’s mind, before Dino started fucking him into every bed he could find with his face shoved into a pillow and a hand around his throat. He remembers before, and he remembers kind older brothers and baseball and trees a mile high.

Ash doesn’t wish for much, these days. He doesn’t pray, like the other kids at school, or beg to lonely stars for dreams so distant he can barely see them, but he does wish. He wishes silently that night, curled in on himself in that hotel bed, listening to the strange cacophony of air conditioning and breathing and the game show Dino’s watching. 

He falls asleep, eventually. Sleep is not made for the wicked, and Ash rarely sleeps peacefully. 

Dino’s not there when he wakes up, and Ash stretches out on the bed. The blinds to the room are closed, and the TV is off now. 

When he sits up, he thinks about the pool, and wonders if Eiji will be there again. He shouldn’t seek him out, he _knows_ that, but he’s spent so much of this last week in Long Island by himself. Eiji is good company, interesting and different, and he laughs at things Ash laughs at, and he smiles when Ash says things he doesn’t understand, and Ash can’t help the feeling he gets when he thinks about Eiji. 

Besides, Eiji promised that he would make Ash something Japanese for him to try after Ash took him for an American staple, and he can’t find it in himself to ditch Eiji like that. Selfishness curls in his gut, thick and unrelenting. 

He’s down at the pool early that morning, and Eiji isn’t there for hours, but Ash doesn’t mind. Eiji arrives alone again, carrying a small box with something in it, and Ash smiles. Maybe he should wish more often.


	2. 1986.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ash and Eiji go out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’ve been saying hotel but i’m kinda capping, imagine if like a hotel and a motel had a baby. that’s where they’re staying.

He waits till Dino’s asleep before slipping out. 

He grabs the walkman off the TV stand, the one he took from some blonde kid in chemistry right before school ended, and slips it, his magstripe key card, and two sticks of minty gum into his jacket pocket. The click of the door lock seems to echo, but Dino never stirs. 

It’s dark outside, stunningly so. Ash blinks. They’re less than an hour from the city, but the difference in the sky is so drastic. He swears he can see the outlines of galaxies, the waves of light between stars, the explosions of supernovas, all from the second floor balcony of the hotel. 

He can see Eiji now, too, if he squints, waving at him from the middle of the parking lot. He clamors down a set of stairs to reach him, and Eiji smiles as he gets closer. 

“Hey,” Ash greets and Eiji responds back similarly. “You ready to get going?”

Eiji nods. “I left a note for Ibe-san, just in case. So he will not worry.”

“Smart,” Ash replies, only a little bit sarcastic. “We definitely won’t get caught now.”

Eiji gapes, plastering on mock defense, but he can’t stop the corners of his mouth from twitching upwards. “You make fun? You make fun of me?”

“Only a little,” he responds, and Eiji puts his hands on his hips. Ash copies him. 

“Rude,” he says, and Ash laughs. “You are bad influence. Making me sneak out. And then joke about me! Yes, very rude.” 

Ash rolls his eyes and starts walking towards the main road. It’s quiet out, other than the near constant gentle whipping of wind and ever present chirping of crickets. 

“I guess that means you don’t want to come with me,” he says with a shrug, and he walks further away, waiting for Eiji to rush up to him. 

“I–“ Eiji flusters for a moment, before running and catching up to Ash. “I joke! You are best influence. Very good for me.”

“That’s what I thought,” he teases, and nudges Eiji with his shoulder, who nudges him back, a little harder. It’s nice, Ash thinks, to have someone to mess around with. Someone that feels like a friend. 

The walk to the beach is not long, despite them choosing to walk to a portion that’s mostly hidden behind trees and tilted road signs. They joke around on the way there, and Ash pushes a shocked Eiji a foot into the street a couple of times, but mostly, they just talk. The conversation is light, about foods they like, movies they watch, things they’ve done. Nothing serious, nothing heavy, nothing Ash fears could put Eiji off him. 

There’s no one else at the beach when they arrive, and Eiji stands just close enough to the water that he could feel it if he took off his shoes. 

“It is beautiful,” he says, glancing back behind him to Ash, who pointedly refuses to get any of his clothes wet.

“Don’t they have beaches in Japan?” Ash asks, and Eiji nods.

“Many, we are island country. But this feels different. I do not know why.”

It feels different to Ash too, now that he thinks about it. He’s been to the beach before, this one is just one of many, but there’s something lighter in the air. He can’t name it.

Eiji sits down after a few moments, further back and away from the coolness of the water. Ash sits down beside him. He tucks his knees to his chest, holding them there and feeling the dig of them into his sternum. 

Eiji lies down, and Ash mimics it. They lay there for a little while, listening to each other’s breaths and the sound around them. Ash feels his fingers pick up and drop sand, over and over; the yellow of the sand underneath them, the deep blue of the sky above them. It pushes them together, presses them between two cosmic entities. 

Lying with Eiji feels as simple as breathing, as unconditional as the tides before them. 

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads,” Ash mutters into the quiet, hands in the sand, and Eiji huffs out a quiet laugh. 

“You sound very smart,” he says. “Very wise.”

“It’s not me. It's just a quote. I don’t know why I said it.”

“It sounds pretty,” Eiji says, almost wistful. He shimmies a little closer in the sand, and Ash can see the particles that toss up and onto his shirt. “I did not know you were such nerd.”

Ash tosses a handful of sand at Eiji in retaliation, but Eiji just laughs and brushes the bits off.

“Do you have more?” He asks, sincerity in every word, and Ash barely hesitates, doesn’t even stop to think. 

“The Earth has music for those who listen,” he recites smoothly. The words flow off his tongue like he’s practiced them every day, just for this moment. Just for Eiji. “A leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars. In the infinite meadows of heaven blossom the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels. The universe shines the stars, constellates the constellations, galactifies the galaxies.”

Eiji looks at him with eyes so enraptured Ash almost has to look away, they’re so bright. “Contelates?” Eiji asks. “Glaticafy?”

“Constellates the constellations,” Ash repeats, and his eyes drift slowly across the sky. “Galactify the galaxies.” His fingers tap against the back of his head, and his feet bounce against one another. 

“What does it mean?” Eiji asks, after a moment has passed for him to think the words over and decide he doesn’t know them. 

“It’s just supposed to mean that things happen without you knowing how,” Ash explains. He lifts a finger straight up, pointing out a series of stars. “And the stars form constellations, like animals and people and stories.”

“Oh! We have in Japan, too. _Seiza_.“ Eiji grabs Ash’s wrist softly in his own hand, pointing it north, tracing out a shape in the sky like a child drawing in a coloring book. “That one is _hokuto_. Is shaped like spoon, no?”

He’s not used to feeling so relaxed with hands on him. But Eiji’s hands around his wrist don’t feel hairy or sweaty or controlling, just gentle and smooth. His fingers twitch, reaching out to hold Eiji’s.

“Big dipper,” Ash says instead. His eyes sting. “That’s what we call it. Hockootu sounds a bit nicer, though.”

Eiji giggles at the pronunciation. “The stars are part of _kami_. Very powerful spirit in Shinto. Many spirit in Shinto, even for toilets. All watching over us.”

Ash turns towards Eiji, propping his head on his side. Eiji stays on his back, looking up at the sky. He’s smiling, his lips parted as he takes the sky in and eyes wide at the sight, awe apparent in every line of his face. 

Ash imagines that things a world away must seem so strange. But maybe, in comparison to the vastness of the universe, his and Eiji’s divide isn’t as far away as it seems. Maybe compared to stars trapped eternally light years away, Japan and New York feel like lovers sharing a bed.

“What’s different about the sky in Japan?” Ash asks. Eiji doesn’t respond for a moment, just breathes, taking it in.

“Like this,” Eiji says, like it's the simplest thing in the world. “But tilted; sideways.” Just a little off, Ash thinks. Something a little wrong. 

He reaches down into his jacket pocket, fiddling in it before he gets a grip on his walkman and pulls it out. The two sets of headphones tangled in his pockets, and he takes a moment to separate the wires, letting the bulk of the box drop in the sand. 

Eiji sits up in surprise, legs criss crossed in the sand. “I did not know you have one!”

“I guess now you know,” Ash grins. He lifts a pair of headphones towards Eiji, who grasps them in both hands before placing them on his head. 

Ash places the other set of headphones over his own ears, and clicks play. The stirring of wind and humming of the sea drowns out as the music begins, and although Ash feels like a ballad best fits the scene of the beach, with its serenity and distant atmosphere, it’s not what pulses through the speaker. 

Instead, a familiar noise of trumpets and synth fill his ears, and Eiji smiles in recognition. 

“I know this one!” He almost shouts, part of his lip bitten under his tooth with the shape his mouth forms. Eiji stands up, and Ash stands with him. 

“You like Peter Gabriel?” Ash asks, as the downbeat begins, and lyrics flow into their ears. He knows the song, of course, but the music is just whatever was on the tape when he got it. 

Eiji nods and holds his hands out, waiting for Ash to take them. It’s a choice Ash doesn’t remember having in a long time, and he feels strange at the proposition. “I have to dance!” Eiji exclaims, and he jumps up into the air, threatening to pull the headphones straight off his head, but they stay firm. “Dance with me!”

Ash hesitates, for just a moment, and Eiji catches his eye, sees the struggle Ash faces even if he doesn’t know why. 

_“All you do is call me!”_ Eiji sings suddenly, releasing any bits of tension, loud and not at all in tune with the song, but Ash finds himself not even caring. It sounds so beautiful falling from Eiji’s lips, purely because they’re _Eiji’s_ , and Ash puts his hands in Eiji’s. 

_“I’ll be anything you need,”_ Ash continues without prompting, and Eiji throws his head back and shakes his hips and their connected limbs and keeps going. He laughs at the Big Dipper line, about how perfectly it fits, and Ash thinks about constellating the constellations, and how everything aligned so utterly and absolutely for them to be here, right now. Screaming song lyrics on a beach in New York, alone except for each other.

There’s moonlight reflecting off the water, glistening onto their hands and highlighting the way skin folds around skin. There’s a string of seaweed three feet away, swaying in the gentle wind of the beach, and there’s shells lined in a smiley face by the side of the water, threatening to be overtaken by the wash, but they all fade away. There’s a spotlight, and all he can see is Eiji. He takes their clasped hand, and leads Eiji out towards the street.

The street is dark, with only the reflection of light on a shaky street sign, and Ash takes them out into the middle of it. Eiji looks around, like there’s anyone there to see them screaming. They both take a deep breath.

_“I wanna be your sledgehammer!”_ Ash shouts in sync with Eiji, and Eiji just jumps around and dances and Ash rolls his eyes and follows along. He spins them in a circle, letting their hair whip around their bodies and their clothes brush against each other, and Ash leans in close when he whisper-sings to Eiji to _“open up his fruitcakes,”_ and Eiji blushes and goes red and just smiles and keeps shouting the words of the song. 

They stay like that for a while, screaming in the street, nothing but two boys and music and the stillness of the universe around them. _“I’m gonna be the sledgehammer!”_ They yell as loud as they can for the final time, and neither of them can stop smiling. 

Ash doesn’t know if he’s ever felt like this. If anyone has ever felt like this. It almost doesn’t feel real. Everything seems too perfect, too clean cut, too entirely right, but maybe that’s just Eiji.

“I want to stay here forever,” Ash whispers, too quiet for Eiji to hear with the beat in his ears, but he can already see the light peeking over the horizon. He can feel the end approaching, but not forever. Just for tonight. 

The song fades out, and Eiji takes the headphones off, holding them in both hands. Eiji takes in Ash’s silence and traces his gaze towards the water, and looks where he looks. He blinks at the light a couple of times, and lets salt and pine fill his nose. Neither of them say anything, just watch the sun rise slowly, and the waves crest, and the birds fly in, and let themselves open back up to the world around them. 

Somewhere, Ash knows that Dino is probably waking up right about now and realizing Ash isn’t there, but he doesn’t focus on it. Just lets it sit in the back of his mind and lets himself focus on the scene around them. 

He takes the headphones from Eiji, takes his own off, and places them back in his jacket pocket. He grabs the two sticks of gum, and hands one out to Eiji.

“Here,” he says, and Eiji takes it. 

“Thank you,” Eiji responds, and he slowly peels the wrapper off before placing it in his mouth. 

“C’mon,” Ash says, with a wave of his shoulder. “Let’s get going.”

Eiji yawns with the words, like time finally caught back up to him, and he nods. “I hope Ibe-san is not awake,” he remarks, and Ash hopes so too. They walk close, arms and fingers brushing but never grabbing, and it’s comfortable. He stares up at the sky as they walk, and the stars stare back at him, so far away he can barely comprehend it. Constellate, he thinks, is what he and Eiji are doing. Like stars, endless and infinite.

They are infinite; even if nothing is forever. 

%%%

Eiji tells him he’s going to take a nap when they get back to the hotel, and that he can’t hang out for the rest of the day because he’s going to take photos with Ibe-san at noon. Ash nods, tells him he can meet him tomorrow, and goes off towards his hotel room just as the heat of the day begins to rise.

He hesitates outside of the door, and glances over the balcony railing to where Dino’s black coupe is parked. It almost seems to glare at him, boiling under the rising sun. 

He swipes his magstripe card after a moment and opens the door with a creak that makes his teeth gnash together unconsciously. His feet glide smoothly over jagged green carpet, and his eyes catch on light streaming from a window, obstructed by a sole figure.

Dino’s standing over the bed when he walks in, fiddling with his tie in both hands. His briefcase sits on the ground beside his leg. 

“It’s good to see you return,” Dino says simply, not even looking up from his tie, like Ash is less important than making sure his collar is neat. He doesn’t ask where Ash has been. Doesn’t ask when he left. Doesn’t do anything but straighten his shirt and pull on his suit jacket. 

Ash leans against the wall, hands in his pockets. The walkman is heavy in it, and he moves his empty gum wrapper between his fingers.

Dino picks up his briefcase in one hand. He steps towards him, and Ash swallows. He doesn’t move, just breathes. In and out, slowly. He knows this game. Just breathe. 

Dino places his hand on Ash’s cheek, and Ash averts his eyes. 

“Look at me, sweetie,” Dino says, voice sickly smooth in Ash’s ears, and he lifts his eyes. 

Dino leans forward, placing his lips on Ash’s. It’s harsh, overpowering, and Ash just stands there; lets it happen. Lets the gum fall to the back of his tongue, lets Dino in. Dino’s open hand glides down Ash’s cheek, feeling the curve of his collar, the strong lines of his chest, the sturdiness of his abs, and stopping just below his waist. Ash puts his hand over Dino’s. He wants to squeeze, dig blunt nails in, but he doesn’t. Just places soft fingers over Dino’s.

Distantly, he wonders if Dino can taste the mint of the gum, if he can smell the salt and sand in his hair, if he can feel the music in Ash’s ears. 

Dino’s lips glide smoothly from Ash’s to his ear, so close Ash shudders at the breath. He can feel their wetness against him, and he just keeps breathing. Dino tightens his hold on Ash, pulling them against each other. 

“If you do something like this again,” Dino says quietly, voice in a place just above a whisper, so heavy in his ears Ash can feel it, “you will see just what I can do.”

Ash breathes. 

Dino pulls off all at once. He moves towards the door, opens it, and shuts it behind him in one move. Ash stays against the wall.

He brings a hand up, wiping the back of it against his lips, and then rubbing at his ear. His eyes stare off for a moment, unfocused, until he pulls them back in. 

“Whatever.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks sm for reading!!! i’ve got the next chapter written and the end of chapter 5, so uh we will see when 4 arrives!!! 
> 
> ugh dino’s such a whore he’s so creepy and FOR WHAT


	3. 1986.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something changes between Ash and Eiji.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> babeys 🥺

Long Island doesn’t have much in terms of elevation, but it makes up for it in trees. 

There’s a big one, strong and solid and probably oak, with a particularly sturdy branch, just a block behind the hotel. 

So that’s where Ash and Eiji eat lunch one week after they’ve first met, legs hanging off the sides and swinging carelessly above the ground. 

Eiji looks down at his hot dog like it might bite him if he moves too much, and Ash rolls his eyes. “It’s just mustard,” he says, taking a bite of his own. His mouth is full, but he keeps talking. “It’s a classic American food. You can’t be here and not try it.”

Eiji looks up from his hot dog to glare his eyes at Ash, but he can only hold it for a moment before he starts to laugh, air slipping past his lips. “It is very big. Smelly too! And I only little understand you with all the food in your mouth, silly.”

Ash swallows. “No, no,” he explains. “It is _fucking_ big, you got to put emphasis on the _fucking_.”

“The hot dog is _fucking_ big,” Eiji tries, and he sounds so uncomfortable fitting a profanity in his mouth that Ash almost chokes on nothing. 

“Much better.” He coughs out, and he takes another bite as Eiji finally takes one of his own, face twisting at the taste.

“It is... spicy. But not like peppers.” 

Ash shrugs, swinging his legs a little faster. “You’ll get used to it.”

“In my country, we eat Karashi. It is like this, but much spicy. You would like it.” 

“Maybe you could make that for us,” Ash asks, more teasing than he is serious. 

Eiji huffs out a laugh. “Only at store. Only in Japan. They do not sell here.”

Ash looks out across from them, at the little parade of shops and delis and laundry mats that line the streets of Long Island. There’s no Japanese stores, anywhere. Only bagel shops and fast food places and mini marts. Ash has never been to Japan, but he can’t imagine that it is anything like this. Things that happen here, couldn’t happen there. There wouldn’t be people like Eiji otherwise.

“Why are you here?” Ash asks, when the moment feels comfortable. It’s too blunt, he thinks, after a moment, too blunt for gentle ears. 

Eiji looks confused. “With you?” 

Ash shakes his head. “New York. Long Island. The beach.”

“Oh,” Eiji replies, soft, and Ash can’t quite decipher it. Eiji feels different, _is_ different, than anyone else he’s ever met, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’ve known each other for such a short time. Only seven days. There’s so much they don’t know about each other.

“I was big athlete in Japan,” Eiji explains, voice distant and sad in a vague sort of way. His finger runs circles on his thigh. “But I got hurt. I was sad, lot of the time, after I got hurt. Ibe-san, a older friend, was coming here to take photos of the beach. And he took me with him. So I could learn to be happy again.”

He regrets asking. It makes it seem real; problems. Like things outside of the two of them, then and there, exist. It brings weight to the world, solidness and viscosity. He wants things away from them, away from Eiji. He wants purity and wholesomeness between them, in a way he can’t with anything else, and it’s selfish, he knows, but he clings to it. 

He regrets asking. 

A moment passes, heavy between them with the gentle weight of Eiji’s words. 

Eiji takes another bite of the hot dog, seemingly enjoying the second bite a bit more, and he watches Ash swing his legs, and he begins to swing his own legs with more ferocity, until their legs are clanging against each other with the harsh slap of shins. 

“Hey!” Ash exclaims. “Watch your legs!”

“You watch your legs! My legs are swinging just fine.”

There it is, again: the easiness that comes between them. It’s so simple, soft and pure, so easy he doesn’t even have to try to build it. It’s a connection he’s never known before. 

Ash can’t help but nudge Eiji with his shoulder. “Swing ‘em a little closer, why don’t you?”

“Why don’t I?” Eiji asks, and he says it in that tone Ash is just learning, that slightly deeper, mischievous one that means he’s about to do something Ash doubts Mrs. Okumura, half a world away, would approve of, and before he knows it, Eiji is swinging both his legs and body back and forth, colliding wordlessly with Ash. 

Eiji just smiles, hot dog loose in his hand, and he just keeps swaying side to side, legs back and forth, and he looks so content beside Ash. So carefree and happy, lost in the moment with Ash beside him, his shoulder crossing in front of his every other sway. 

Eiji’s hair swings as he moves, brushing against the sides of his face, just barely grazing in front of his eyes, and Ash wants so badly to push it back it stings like a physical ache inside of him. 

And there they are, ten feet up in a tree, laughing with too mustardy hot dogs and sweat on the back of their necks, when Eiji leans a little too far, kicks a little too hard, and suddenly Eiji’s falling, right beside Ash. 

Ash’s hot dog drops from his hand, and he’s grabbing Eiji by the forearm, locking his fingers around the boy’s limb, whose eyes are locked on Ash and nowhere else. Eiji’s panting, breaths heavy and desperate, like he can’t get enough air in. 

“It’s okay,” Ash says, struggling to stay wrapped around the tree limb while holding Eiji’s weight. Eiji wraps his other hand around Ash’s arm. “I’ve got you.” 

Eiji keeps panting, incapable of words with the pulse of fear in his heart, so heavy he can feel it, but Ash watches as he looks down, and realizes Eiji’s two yards above the ground, higher than he is tall.

Eiji’s eyes widen, just enough, and he nods at Ash. Trust. Their eyes lock with trust, in a way Ash has never felt before. He trusts Eiji to land safely. He feels himself nod back, and he lets go, slowly, so slowly he can feel every lift of his fingers off the other’s arm, and Eiji drops to the ground with a quiet thud. Eiji falls like he knows how, and Ash breathes a sigh of relief. 

He’s okay, Ash thinks. He’s okay. 

He climbs down from the tree as quickly as he can, watching Eiji and the fallen hot dogs as he goes. When he gets to the ground, Eiji is barreling into him, wrapping arms around his waist and burying his face in his neck. 

Ash feels his breath hitch, and he carefully returns it, wrapping arms around Eiji. They stay that way for a moment, Eiji breathing into Ash’s neck, Ash feeling Eiji hold him like his life depends on it. 

It’s hot outside, though, sticky and unrelenting, and Eiji pulls back after a moment. He looks abashed, almost ashamed. A moment passes between them, and there’s only the sound of wind and car horns and the distant rumble of waves. 

“I dropped my fucking hot dog,” Eiji mutters, soft and quiet, and Ash laughs. 

He laughs so hard it bites his chest, makes his eyes water and his cheeks sting, and soon he’s doubling over, and Eiji is too, and they roll to the ground, laughing all the while. 

The grass is dry and sharp, digging into their backs, but they ignore it. Their faces aim towards the sky, heads inches apart, and when Ash looks over, laughter finally subsiding, there’s Eiji, looking back at him. 

The slopes of their nose are almost touching. They’re so close Ash can see every detail of Eiji’s face. His eyes aren’t solid brown, he sees now, they’re just the slightest hint of something lighter, just around the edges, and it shines under the gold of the sun. He can see the flicks of Eiji’s eyebrow, the darkened tip of his nose, the lines in the corner of his mouth, the way his lips are parted so slightly, and they’re getting closer. So close, so unbearably close, and Ash’s heart beats so loud and deep in his chest he can hear it. 

He’s only ever kissed one person before, one man, a million times, but it’s never felt like this. It’s never felt like fireworks and when you stand in the street and scream the words to a Peter Gabriel song and when you meet a boy from the other side of the world and want to tell him you love him, but you can’t, because you’ve only known him a week and your idea of love is so fucked and ruined that you can’t risk ruining his too. But you do it anyway, because you’re sixteen, and you’ve never felt this present, this full, this longing; anything like this before. 

Ash’s lips press against Eiji’s so softly he almost doesn’t believe it’s happened at all. His eyes drift closed, and he’s grabbing the back of Eiji’s head to bring him closer, grasping just slightly, for warmth and comfort and _more_ , but Eiji gasps. Ash lets go.

“I never–“

“It’s okay,” Ash cuts off. “I’ll teach you.”

“Okay,” Eiji replies. Quiet. Keeping the moment between them, between time and space, just here, and just now. “I trust you.” 

And it’s selfish, it’s so _so_ selfish, but he wants Eiji on his lips, he wants him replacing the dirty and sick smell of aftershave and paperwork, the kind that molds and doesn’t let go, and he wants him with him forever, even if he’s only known him a week. 

He wants Eiji. 

“Kiss me,” Ash says, and he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> writing fluffy gay things because it helps me forget about my lesbian pining that’s on halt for quarantine 😔✊
> 
> next chapter might take a little longer, if i’m unlucky, ive been writing so much for school that i just lack the energy to write outside of school :/


	4. 1986.4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ash and Eiji take a break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: they don’t have to be touchy touchy to show they’re in love  
> also me: make them hold hands in every scene

Ash parts from Eiji, begrudgingly, just fifteen minutes before 5 o’clock. 

He hovers outside Eiji’s room. There’s other people milling about, entering and exiting hotel doorways, walking towards the pool, getting into cars. Ash ignores them. “You have to go?” Eiji asks, eyes big.

Ash wishes he didn’t. He really does. 

“Yeah,” he says instead. It’s the truth, at least. Dino gets back at 5, at the earliest. “I’ll miss you.”

Eiji’s smile goes wide. “What do you say?” The little shit, Ash thinks. “I did not hear. You repeat?”

Ash furrows his brow, scrunches up his lips, rolls his eyes. “You heard me.” 

Eiji just laughs. He leans in close to Ash, pushing onto his tiptoes. His arms go around the back of Ash’s neck, crossing over one another. Eiji’s arms are cool against his skin, and Ash exhales happily. 

He knows there’s other people around. Anyone could see them. But they’re so far away, and no one’s really watching the corner of the hotel. For a moment, it’s just him and Eiji. Just blonde and black, just brown against green, just two different boys. The world narrows when it’s just them in a way nothing else does. 

Eiji leans in, slowly, and Ash sucks in a sharp breath in surprise. He can feel the gentle heat of Eiji’s body, the slight parting of his lips. Ash holds his breath. 

Eiji hovers in front of him for a moment, before pressing a soft kiss to his cheek. The skin tingles where Eiji’s lips leave their imprint. 

“Thank you, Ash,” Eiji whispers. He settles down on the ground, and steps into his hotel room. “I see you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” Ash confirms. “Always.”

%%%

Dino feels the need to bother him when he gets back from work, as always. 

The man opens the door to the hotel without an ounce of grace, briefcase dropping to the ground and door slamming shut behind him. It shakes the walls, the doorframe, makes the world echo around him, and the paintings lining the walls shiver. Gentle images of dancers and flowers scurry away, safe behind warped glass and acrylic lines. 

Ash looks up from his position sprawled on the bed, book in hand. He keeps the pages open, but slips a bookmark in between them anyways. He doesn’t want to lose his place. 

Dino waits in the narrow hallway between the doorway and the bed. Ash closes the book, placing it carefully beside him, and stands up. 

Dino gestures for him to come closer. Ash swallows. He steps forward, one foot at a time, brushing his hair back behind his ears. It tickles, just a little, but it’s all Ash can think about. 

“Sweetheart,” Dino murmurs in Ash’s ear, both of his wrists held lightly in one hand. It’s not tight enough to hurt, but Ash can read the gesture for what it is; a threat, a warning of what could come. 

Dino’s chest is so close to Ash’s that it touches his with every exhale. Dino’s leg pushes between his, and Ash inhales sharply. “Dino,” he whispers softly. His mind is mostly quiet, brain on repeat. He doesn’t want to be here, it says like a mantra. He doesn’t want to be here. 

Dino takes his hands off Ash’s wrists, putting both of his hands on the sides of Ash’s face. He pushes his hair out of his eyes, and swipes a calloused thumb across his forehead. “My beautiful boy,” he says, voice so heavy it makes Ash nauseous. His leg stays between Ash’s. 

“You know I love you,” the man says, and Ash lets Dino’s thumbs rub circles on his cheeks. He imagines its Eiji instead, for just one, sweet moment, and his heart flutters. The contrast between Dino’s fat, swollen hands and Eiji’s thin, cool ones is stunning, and it helps him pull his mind away, helps him say what he needs to say. 

“I know,” Ash responds. He does. The only one who could, anymore, after what Dino's done to him. 

“Then _act_ like it.” Dino’s thumbs dig into his face, burning and rubbing off the gentle feeling Eiji left there, but Ash doesn’t move. Dino’s always been like this, switching between gentle and harsh like there’s a switch inside of him.

He doesn’t flinch. He might’ve when he was younger, naive and truly believing sickness didn’t grow in people. He’s smarter than that, now. Hardened by circumstance.

Dino’s breath smells like cigarettes and aftershave. Ash tries to wash it out, tries to remember hot dogs and beach salt and chocolate covered cones, but all it does is make his chest fill with a distant sort of ache that makes him wish he was anywhere else. 

When Dino kisses him, the first time since he’s kissed Eiji, he stumbles backwards. His hands push out, shoving Dino back and away from him. Dino growls, but doesn’t move closer. 

He doesn’t want Dino on him, tainting what Eiji had left there. It feels almost unholy, violating the touches Eiji had pressed into his face. It feels wrong. 

“Who is it,” Dino asks, after they stare at each other for a moment, “that you’ve been with? The little chink?” Dino’s words surprise him, but he doesn’t show it. He keeps a cold gaze. “You spend your days with him, thinking I don’t know?”

Ash feels anger curl in his chest. “He’s not– don’t say that about him.”

Dino smiles, sick and slimy. “You think he loves you, now? Like I do?”

Ash turns his head away from Dino. Looking at the man makes him want to punch him, to go wild. It’s his only escape. 

Dino steps closer, and Ash steps back, one step at a time in the cramped hotel room, until he’s up against a closet door. A door knob digs into his back. He keeps his head turned away from Dino. “No one else loves you, sweetheart. Not like I do.”

Dino curls a finger down his cheek, then tightening it in Ash’s hair. He shakes Ash’s head. “Look at me,” he growls, tone deep and voice angry.

Ash does. It makes something volatile grow in him. All he wants is to kick the man, but he can’t. He knows he can’t. 

Dino’s grip in his hair hurts, but he pushes through it. Doesn’t let it show. Dino’s voice is soft when he speaks again, a sharp juxtaposition against his rough hands. “You’re incapable of being loved by anyone else, Ash. You’re so lucky you have me. The only one who could love someone like you.”

Ash doesn’t respond. Just stares at Dino. Thinks about dark eyes and dark hair. Thinks about kissing soft lips, about holding gentle hands. Thinks about what Eiji would say if he knew what had happened to Ash. If he knew what he’d let the man in front of him do. How quickly Eiji would look sick, get nauseous at the sight of him. 

Dino shakes Ash’s head. “Do you understand me?”

“I do, old man.” Dino takes his hand off slowly, and Ash shoves it the rest of the way, impatient and upset.

Dino sighs, sitting down at the foot of the bed. He loosens his tie, takes off his belt. The click echoes. “You’re going to have to show me now, sweetheart.” He gestures with a finger. “Come here.”

Ash’s heart runs and hides under his intestines at the words and the look in Dino’s eyes, searching for relief in the maggots and rot that fill him. 

His book sits just inches from Dino, mocking him with its proximity and taunts of another world. His fingers ache for it. 

His memories flew to somewhere else, away, as he gives Dino the smile he knows he likes. When he slots himself between Dino’s legs, just like how he knows, he wonders how much longer he’s destined to live like this.

%%%

Ash expects more things to change with Eiji, but they don’t.

They still spend afternoons along boardwalks, and mornings by the pool, and they still laugh and talk and share moments, but they don’t kiss again. 

Instead of kisses, Eiji takes his hand, intertwining their fingers, letting his head fall against Ash’s shoulder, his side pressing up against Ash’s. Eiji turns his head towards Ash, smiling, letting light reflect off his eyes and into Ash’s, but he just buries his head into the crook of Ash’s neck in place of leaning in. 

They don’t talk about what they are. They don’t talk about where they’re going. They don’t talk about either of their inevitable returns to their homes. They don’t talk about anything but the _now_ , and they let the world rest like it is. 

Ash pulls Eiji’s hand towards his face, legs dangling off the side of the boardwalk. He can hear the cries of seagulls, and he can see the water lap against wooden poles, and if he tries harder, he can feel eyes on him, watching two young boys sit so close on the wood. He narrows his focus, pulling in. His breath ghosts over Eiji’s knuckles, light, and Eiji shivers. 

“Wet,” he explains, looking up at Ash under dark, thick eyelashes. 

“Wet?” Ash teases. Maybe he just wants an excuse to touch Eiji, to feel him under his fingertips in ways he hasn't already. “I’ll show you wet.”

He pulls Eiji’s hand closer, kissing the top of it, and Eiji laughs, loud and airy and everything to Ash, and he shoves his hands towards Eiji’s middle, tickling. 

Eiji shrieks, twisting on the ground, face contorted as he laughs, hands attempting to bat away Ash’s. Ash tracks the smile, his own face mimicking it without his consent, and his hands trace and tickle every crevice of Eiji’s torso playfully.

“St–stop!” Eiji yells, still laughing, and Ash‘s eyes glance past Eiji and he sees families pull their kids just a little bit faster and he sees couples step just a few paces away, and he pulls his hands off Eiji abruptly.

He’s not a shy person. He doesn’t care about being in crowds. But he likes his privacy, and judgmental gazes burn into him like iron. 

Ash doesn’t touch Eiji when he stands up. “Let’s go somewhere.”

Eiji’s eyes widen as he stands. He’s panting lightly. “Where?”

“Somewhere. Anywhere. I don’t care.” Away from here. Away from eyes that sting and mock and burn. 

He wants to take Eiji by the hand, grip him and let him follow and pretend they’re in a romcom where the camera spins around them just to show how close they are, but he can’t. He just starts walking instead, and Eiji follows him, concern in his eyes. Ash doesn’t deserve him. 

They trek for a little while, away from the beach, until they’re passing little shops with glass windows and buildings strung up in a post-war haze that Ash is surprised still manage to stand so well. There’s a comfortable silence between them, just the grind and squeak of cars and distant voices repeating phrases they can’t make out. 

Ash takes a harsh turn at the end of a street, glancing over his shoulder at Eiji, who’s watching Ash, but also the town around them like it’ll vanish if he takes his eyes away for too long. 

Ash walks down the narrow alley, so much cleanlier than what he’s used to for alleys. He leans against the wall, brick against his back, and it makes him feel like he should be smoking or something. It’s never really been his thing, despite Dino’s constant puffs of thick cigars, but he thinks he’d probably look pretty cool if it was. 

“Here?” Eiji asks, standing beside him. He doesn’t put his back to the wall. 

Ash shrugs. “Sure.”

Eiji fiddles with his camera strap. He brought it along today, back from a shoot with Ibe-san and not bothering to stop by the hotel room and drop it off. It’s slung over his neck, tight by his waist, and Ash watches his fingers. They fiddle with it, not uncomfortable, just unsure of what to do. 

Eiji looks up at Ash. Ash looks back. 

“You look like movie star,” Eiji breathes. “Your hair is all,” Eiji waves a hand to the side, gesturing to show how windswept the hair is, “and it is in front of your eyes. Very movie star.”

Ash smirks. “What, you think I look like River Phoenix or something?”

Eiji cocks his head. Ash can’t help but think he looks a little like a puppy, innocent, but with a bark he knows how to use. “I do not know him,” Eiji admits, which Ash can’t help but think is a bit of a shame. But he doesn’t really know any Japanese actors, either. “But maybe _he_ looks like _you._ ” Eiji continues to fiddle with his camera strap as he speaks, until suddenly the latch of the bag is open and he’s turning it on. 

The lens pops out under his fingers. He raises it towards his eyes, and Ash turns away on instinct. 

“Oh,” Eiji says, sounding sad, but not about Ash; just that Ash seems to not want his photo taken. He lowers the camera. Ash shoves his hands in his back pockets. He’s making them uncomfortable, but he doesn’t know what to do. Cameras make him feel gross, icky, make him want to fade away until he’s nothing but lightly grounded dust and fog. 

“Sorry,” Ash replies, not looking at Eiji. 

“No, no.” Eiji shakes his head. He thrusts the camera out like it didn’t cost 600 dollars. “You take one of me.”

Ash feels his eyebrows cock in disbelief. “You sure?” he asks, but Eiji just nods. 

“I trust you,” he says, smiling his ever-present smile once again. He puts up a peace sign, which Ash just rolls his eyes playfully at. He messes with the camera for a second until he locates what he thinks is the right button, and Eiji nods in confirmation. 

The background behind Eiji is drab, just red-brown that turns muddy the longer you look at it, and little stubs of cigarettes dot the ground. But Eiji poses like he’s in front of the Eiffel Tower, or somewhere equally as fascinating and beautiful, like he’s not really in an alley with Ash. He deserves to be there, Ash thinks. Not here. 

He studies Eiji for a moment, trying to fit him in the center of the frame. Eiji’s hair pools to one side with the tilt of his head, and it just barely touches his ears. His smile is all lopsided, and his ears are a little red, and his skin looks smooth and silky. 

Ash thinks he looks beautiful. 

“I pose like idol, no?”

Ash doesn’t really know what Eiji’s talking about, but he nods anyway. “Yeah. Like an idol.” Does Japan have their River Phoenix? If he looks like Phoenix, there must be someone that looks like Eiji, just to complete their set. 

The camera goes off with a flash, and Eiji takes the camera out of Ash’s hands. He holds it up. “Just one,” he pleads; promises. “Me and you?”

Ash thinks it over. Let’s the idea roll around his head like marbles down a street. He puts a hand against brick, and taps a finger. Puts one leg over the other. 

“Just one,” he agrees. Eiji jumps, the camera bag flopping around him. 

He takes the camera in one hand, putting his other arm around Ash’s shoulder, and they both lean into each other. Ash breathes in, taking in the gentle scents of Eiji. He smells like sweetened salt, but also spice and something light. It coats his nostrils, filling them. 

Eiji turns the camera around. Ash puts one hand across his body, letting it rest on Eijj’s hip. Eiji shivers at the contact, pulling his lip under his teeth. 

“Ready?” He asks, once he’s calm enough to speak without stuttering, and Ash nods. 

The flash of the camera is brighter right in front of them. Ash blinks spots out of his eyes. Eiji pulls off him. 

“Ibe-san will make for us,” Eiji explains, tucking the camera back into his bag. 

Ash steps towards him, and he doesn’t even notice at first, too distracted putting his camera away. He jolts back a little when he looks up, surprised, but quickly leans back in. 

Ash falls back against the brick again, Eiji in front of him. He pulls Eiji’s hand away from his side, rolling it against his own. The wind whips around them, flowing between their ears. It squeaks as it slides against the indents of the brick, and tosses chip bags through the air and into the street.

“It is very loud,” Eiji says. He’s blushing, Ash realizes. Pink colors the gentle brown of his skin, and Ash watches the color move around. 

“I used to go down to Brooklyn a lot,“ he says, quietly. He doesn’t know what he’s saying, or why. Maybe it’s the comfort Eiji brings, or the way the wind makes it feel like no one else could ever overhear this story.

“Shor– my friend, his aunt lived in an apartment by the beach down there, and we’d go visit her during the day in the summer. She always needed help with groceries, or laundry, or something.”

Eiji smiles. “You were such a kind young man. What happen?”

Ash hits him lightly in the shoulder with his free hand. “Are all Japanese such bullies?”

Eiji teases a smile. “Are all Americans such violent?” There’s just the hum of the wind for a second, before: “Keep going.”

“It’s nothing important. You don’t have to act interested.”

“But I am! You are good storyteller.”

“There’s no plot or moral or anything. It’s just a memory,” Ash says. Nostalgia sits heavy in him, but he doesn’t know why. Thinking of Shorter usually only brings bad thoughts, these days. 

“I want to know. What did tiny Ash thought of Brooklyn?”

“It’s no Manhattan. But it’s got Coney Island, and the Williamsburg Bridge. The buildings aren’t as tall, though. My friend’s aunt lived in a big public housing building, the apartments they put up so old people don’t have to live on the streets. But it was nice.” Mostly, other than when they’d stolen quarters out of washing machines just to spend it on some rotten ice cream, or when they’d watched a man high on crack shoot a bodega employee in the head and break down crying. Other than that. 

He almost forgets why he started telling this story, but he keeps going. 

“The wind used to be so loud there, all the air pulling off the beach and just whipping around between buildings. It was so loud, but it never felt like it. It was just comforting.”

Eiji gets a look in his eyes like he’s imagining it in his head. Maybe he’s imagining him and Ash there, picturing the two of them in a little apartment as the wind follows behind them. Maybe there’s a fat cat resting on their counter, belly full with the surplus of food they can afford. Maybe there’s the flicker of a television in their apartment, left on in their haste to get outside. Maybe there’s Japanese cookbooks sprawled open on counters, hastily scribbled in with Ash’s english notes. Maybe it’s just them, alone except for the roar of the wind.

“It sounds nice,” he says, eyes still off but beginning to focus on Ash. 

Ash twists Eiji’s hands under his own. He wants to kiss Eiji so bad, but he won’t. Wants to put his lips against his ear and let him feel it, wants to wrap both arms around his waist and slip his hands in the pockets of his jean shorts, but he won’t. He knows better; doesn’t want to feel anyone wipe away what Eiji’s left again. 

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Ash says. It’s quieter than he means it to sound.

Eiji makes a confused noise.

“About the other day. At the tree. You don’t have to stay around me if you don’t want to, you know. I don’t want to force you.”

Eiji pulls off of him, the loss of the hand leaving him feeling empty. “Why would I not want to be with you?”

Ash can’t meet his eyes. “You know why.“ 

Eiji’s gaze hardens. Steels. He crosses his arms. “I do not. You are wonderful person, Ash. Always I want to be with you.”

Ash sighs angrily. He runs a hand across his forehead. He thinks about maggots, about rot. He doesn’t know where it’s coming from. “But we can’t.” He doesn’t know what he’s talking about: their divide? Or something else? Something bigger? It’s not like he doesn’t enjoy spending time with Eiji, because he certainly does. He’s just a realist, almost nihilistic, vaguely cynical. 

“Why not?” Eiji asks, and he’s genuine. It spills into every word, and Ash can taste the anger in them. Not towards Ash, but towards others. Towards the possibility of being apart. 

“What aren’t you getting?” Ash yells, anger and heat and emotion overcoming, and Eiji takes a step back. Ash takes a deep breath, trying to placate himself. “You don’t– you don’t feel how you think you feel. Not about me.”

No one can. He knows it simply, simply and undeniably. It’s not his brain twisting words and moments and feelings around, it’s a fact. He’s messed up, and ruined, and he’s selfish. No one loves greed. No one loves broken things. No one loves him. 

“How you know?” Eiji questions, harsh but so close to Ash it makes his eyes go cross. “You tell me ‘always.’ And now you lie? How you know?”

“No one does, Eiji! Not anymore!” Not since Dino. Not since Griff and Dad and Jennifer. Not since Shorter. Not since he’s been shoved and broken so many times his heart spills rot onto others. He’ll ruin Eiji, he realizes. He’ll choke him, suffocate him till he’s nothing but flies and piles of flesh. 

“You are not boss of me!” Eiji yells. His english slips as his words become more heated, more passionate and intense. “I make how I feel, not you! Me!” He fists his hands, squeezing. “Do not talk about you that way, Ash!”

Ash stops, breath hitching. Eiji hesitates. He looks down. They’re both panting now, so close to each other they can feel every heartbeat, and as Eiji closes his eyes, Ash realizes he doesn’t want to argue anymore.

“I do not mean to yell,” Eiji says softly, sounding sad. He takes Ash’s hand into his own, moves his knuckles under his fingers, folds his hands around his own, lets the palm rest against his. He leans in, resting his forehead against Ash’s.

Ash brings a hand up towards Eiji’s face, slowly, letting his palm trace the curve of Eiji’s cheekbone before twisting a dark lock of hair between his fingers. 

“I did not know I...” Eiji’s eyes close, breath filling him slowly. “I feel this way. I have never feel this way. For anyone.”

Ash waits. Waits for the punchline, the joke, waits for Eiji to laugh and get it over with. Waits for him to tell him he’s ruined, incapable of being loved. 

“Until I meet you. I feel this way now.”

Ash’s heart sputters in his chest. Disbelief coats his tongue. Maggots and rot. He pulls back, the loss of contact stinging him, despite their hand still being intertwined. “Like how you feel about girls?” He asks. It feels hollow. It feels unreal. He feels like he’s watching himself perform. He looks into Eiji, through him. There’s nothing there but honesty, pure and consuming, and Ash waits.

“It is different. More. Maybe that is wrong, I do not know, but it is how I feel.”

Ash breathes, breathes like he’s never taken a breath before, like he’ll never take a breath again. 

“I– I,” he struggles, but it won’t come out. 

“It’s okay,” Eiji says softly, and there’s a sad sort of smile on his face. He looks out towards the street, at a bakery and a shop advertising a deal on fishing gear. “We get hotdogs?”

He thinks back, back to the hotel room with Dino. Thinks about Dino’s words that ring in his ears, unrelenting and incessant. Thinks about what Eiji would say if he said what’s on his mind. There’s so much he wants to say, so much he wants to tell Eiji about absolutely nothing at all. 

“I love you,” he says instead, knowing it’ll ruin Eiji, knowing it’s selfish, knowing neither of them deserve the words for entirely different reasons.

Eiji gasps, eyebrows raised and chest stopping. 

“Love?” He asks, and it’s so quiet Ash isn’t sure he’s heard right. But he repeats it. “Love?”

He’s scrambling. “If you–“

“I love you too,” Eiji says, passionate and intense. More intense than Ash has ever seen. “ _Ai shiteiru.”_

When Eiji says it, he looks like stars. He shines for all the world like he belongs above it. Ash wants to hang his picture in the sky, just beside Ursa Major, and let the rest of the planet see what he sees. 

“You’re sappy as hell.” He sees the irony in it, the massive hypocrisy, but he chooses to ignore it. 

“Sappy?”

Ash rolls his eyes, the millionth time that day. Doesn’t bother to explain. “Yeah, sure. Hot dogs.” 

“You are the one who say _‘I love you’_ out of nowhere!”

“You said it back!”

“You say it first!”

Ash thinks, maybe for the first time since he was eight years old, maybe ever, that _this_ is where he belongs. Ash thinks this is it. Ash thinks he could die right here, and he would die happy. Ash doesn’t believe in fate, but he thinks Eiji and him were always meant to be here, two distant atoms pulled together by an invisible force, just waiting to collide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH CONTEXT _ai shiteiru_ is like love love. like life partner type love. so eiji’s never really said it to anyone before. that kinda thing is my shit so of course it’s here 
> 
> also!!! in this chapter Ash’s brooklyn story is directly linked to my moms experiences (again) but this time in Brownsville, Brooklyn, which kinda doesn’t work cause it was such a jewish, latino, and black area that there were literally no asian ppl there in the 80s, but i have chosen to ignore that because i want ash to tell eiji a cute(ish) little story and i kept thinking about how loud the wind can be there, but also half my moms new york stories have some like throwaway line with casual violence, so i’m guessing ash saw some of that too 🤧  
> thank


	5. 1986.5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ash and Eiji find their endings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GOD I LOVE THEM SO MUCH I WAS SO SOFT WRITING THEM THEYRE SO CUTE I JUST WANT THEM TO BE HAPPY DHDBFNDND
> 
> oh wait pretend the vietnam war ended later it’s for the plot i swear 
> 
> also ash is a nerd and i will die by that

“We’re going back to Manhattan the day after tomorrow.”

Ash’s fingers freeze in their place, halfway around his waist as he stops pulling his jacket off. “What?”

Dino scoffs. “You heard me.”

Ash did; he just didn't want to believe it. Didn’t want it to feel real.

“In the morning?”

Dino nods from his spot on the bed. He’s illuminated solely by a lamp that sends out harsh orange light that makes his eyes sting. “Mmhmm.”

Ash opens his mouth, but nothing save for air comes out. His feet moving sloppily to the bathroom door. He’s too loud closing it, he knows that, but he can’t do anything other than rest his head against the pale wood. He fists his hands at his sides, squeezing his eyes shut. His fists pound against his sides, once, twice, three times. 

He runs a hand through his hair. He can feel his face heating up, can feel the hints of red even as he refuses to look at himself. He’s stupid, so stupid he can hardly believe it, he realizes. There’s so much he wants to say, so much he wants to do, so much time he wants to spend with Eiji. 

It’s time he’ll never get back. He’ll never get Eiji back. 

His hands shake at his sides. He wills them to stop, but they refuse. Their rebellion continues even as he shoves them under the faucet, icy cold water pouring out and over them. His eyes stay shut. He doesn’t want to see himself in the mirror, doesn’t want to see warm cheeks and tousled hair and parted lips. 

He coughs, bile sitting hot in the back of his throat. He swallows rapidly, trying to wash it down. 

He’s not sure if he should tell Eiji he’s leaving. Maybe it would be easier for the both of them if he just disappeared, gone without a trace. Maybe it would make things easier for Eiji. 

But he doesn’t know if he can. He doesn’t know if he can imagine spending the rest of his life knowing Eiji never got closure. Selfishness coils in his gut. 

“Fuck,” he whispers, blobs of green and blue swirling behind his eyelids, long car rides and towering skyscrapers building in his mind’s eye. 

His eyes blink open. Jade meets jade in the mirror. He looks a mess, face splotchy and hair crooked. 

“Fuck.”

%%%

Once, when Ash was smaller and blonder and not that much shorter, he made a friend. 

Shorter Wong held himself like the rest of the world already knew who he was, knew that he didn’t give a shit, and would step right over it. 

Shorter Wong spoke like he’d been around the world thrice, knew there wasn’t a thing he hadn’t seen, and nothing he hadn’t considered already. 

Shorter Wong was the first person in a long time to treat Ash like a person, when Ash was growing disgusted by how used he was to blow jobs in showers and filthily stained white sheets, and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever forget how much just enough meant to him. 

He’s ashamed that he can’t remember how he met Shorter, just that he wasn’t there, and then he was, and it was like he always had been. Shorter had a way of doing that to you, making you think the world centered around him without his thinking it. 

Shorter showed him better ways to skip paying for the subway, showed him which mini marts would let a couple cents off slide, showed him which streets didn’t have a problem with white boys. 

Shorter would wait for him just outside the library, foot tapping quickly against the ground just across from the marble lion. It always made Ash roll his eyes when Shorter insisted he lighten up on the books, lest he turn into more of a hag than their English teacher, who seemed to be the only person with a book in their hands more often than him. 

Sometimes, Shorter would sling an arm around Ash when they walked. Sometimes, Ash would flinch violently, and Shorter would just let the arm fall off, no harm, no foul. No questions asked. 

Sometimes, when Ash couldn’t stop shaking and his mouth tasted like bile and something he couldn’t find it in himself to name, Shorter would take him to his folks’ restaurant and shove egg drop soup in front of him. Ash would sit quiet, slurping at noodles and broth, until his hands stopped tapping anxiously and he could think clearly again. Shorter would just smile. 

Shorter took him all over New York City. They rode the ferry, back and forth. They played cards in an endless array of alleys. They teased deli-cats until their owner kicked them out. Shorter gave him reprieve and friendship in an otherwise never ending stream of bleakness and black. 

But once, when Ash was smaller and blonder and barely even shorter at all, he lost a friend. 

Shorter didn’t die. Shorter didn’t wake up one day and decide to hate him. Shorter just got beat to hell by Dino and the pricks he worked with, because Ash seemed to lack the basic ability to think rationally, and maybe at least keep Shorter out of his room when Dino was having meetings. 

Ash had screamed, screamed so loud it shook the walls and Dino’s bastard friends had held him back and gripped his mouth and laughed the laughter of the damned and he’d watched, watched Shorter’s blood go flying, watched Shorter’s stomach lose its content, watched Shorter twist and groan and refuse to cry. 

Shorter had been beat up before, been punched and kicked and slapped, but never like this. And Ash guesses that’s when Mr. and Mrs. Wong decided enough was enough, because they sold the restaurant and moved a couple thousand miles to California, and Ash had never even gotten Shorter’s house number. Because Shorter had always just _been there_ , and a world without Shorter Wong felt as unimaginable as a world without the sky. 

Ash doesn’t think he’ll ever see Shorter again. Thousands and thousands of miles, delayed by time and age and countless things, and most of all, just shitty, rotten fucking luck.

%%%

Once, when Ash was smaller and blonder and more than a little bit shorter, he ran away for the second time. 

Broken hi-tops splashed through thick puddles, pumped against concrete and sent sparks up through his calves. Wind and specks of snow bit at his face, cracked at his lips and rushed blood to his cheeks. 

He held his arms tighter against himself as he ran. Bodies with no faces turned to glare at him, but he couldn’t see them. His feet just kept moving, running and running. 

He took turns he’d taken a million times before until he was walking paths he’d never seen. He kept going, even as the snow on the ground seemed to climb and his body shivered viciously. His hands, huddled in his chest, gripped his jacket tighter. His fingers felt numb, like parasitic blobs he had no control over. 

He felt so alone, rushing down the sidewalks then, that he wondered if this was how God felt when he created the universe, desperate for attachment and something solid. 

His legs wobbled, stumbling over a crack, and his knees came out from underneath him. His hands fell into the snow, burning under the cold. He panted, head hanging, and watched his breaths form white in front of his face.

Legs passed him by, legs with no owners and little viscosity. A cat, just a snout and a tail, smelled him and kept walking. A plastic bag smacked against his side, the logo blurred into nothingness. 

He pushed down on his hands, tried to get up, tried to keep going, tried to get away. Away from Dino, because now there were photos, videos; and humiliation is just more control. 

He felt the moment he broke. He felt his body shake with something that wasn’t the cold and that drained him of any remaining energy, and he must have looked so pitiful then, a blonde mass crying on an icy sidewalk in the black of the night.

He lifted his head slowly. His vision faded at the edges, and all he could see was the sidewalk in front him, concrete slab after concrete slab, endless before him. But he couldn’t get up. And he just kept thinking, about the photos, about the videos, of him vulnerable and innocent and aching. And it made him sick, and _god_ why couldn’t he stop crying? 

His second time running away wasn’t nearly as successful as the first. A black car stopped beside him, after Ash didn’t know how long, and Ash was so numb and frozen and empty he couldn’t even resist against the familiar hands that pulled him into the backseat of the car. 

He just shivered, and stared at the ground, and wished for something more. More than this life. More than Dino and sidewalks and endlessness.

He fell out of the car when it stopped in front of his current apartment. His knees tore at the pavement. Hands pulled him, grumbling. He could barely see. 

Ash’s second time running away was also his last. Never let it be said that he wasn’t smart, didn’t know when to cut his losses, couldn’t see when he was beat. 

He stays where he is, now.

%%%

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

There’s quiet for a moment. Just breathing. Eiji blinks.

“You are leaving?” 

The sound of Eiji’s voice pang in Ash’s gut. His heart clenches uselessly, beating faster. Eiji sounds sad, sadder than Ash has ever heard, tongue coated in disbelief, like he never truly thought their summer could end. 

Nothing extraordinarily special had happened on their last day in Long Island together. The moon hadn’t burst into a million pieces, the tides hadn’t taken over coastal cities, the interior of the planet hadn’t melted the outer crust. 

Instead, Eiji was gone for the first half of the day, for something as ordinary as to take photos. The rest of the day was just them alone, spent poolside, talking and giggling over ice cream and off-brand chips. 

He spent it letting himself think he had forever. 

“Dino’s done with work or whatever. We’re going back to Manhattan in the morning.”

Eiji doesn’t speak, just lets the pool sit behind him and his chair squeak underneath him and ants climb the table beside him. 

“I don’t wanna go back. I miss Manhattan, but you’re here. And I can’t get away from Dino when I’m there.” Eiji’s face scrunches with concern, and he reaches out, placing his hand on Ash’s leg just to rub soft circles in it.

He sighs. He lets himself feel Eiji’s hand, smell the chlorine of the pool, and his skin warm under the sun. 

Eiji hesitates, and then: “When you say–“

Ash feels something for Eiji he’s never felt before. Something he feels every time his thoughts flick towards him, every time he decides on their plans for the day. Something he’s not sure he’ll ever feel again. But Eiji can’t know. He _can’t_. 

The thought of Eiji knowing about what Dino does, what _Ash_ has done, makes him nauseous. Makes him want to squeeze his eyes shut till the pressure pops him open. Makes him want to hold his breath till his body just isn’t there anymore. 

Talking about Dino, about what happens behind closed doors and sometimes just thick enough alley walls, about fat, sweaty hands, feels unholy. It feels like a sin he’ll never repent for. It feels like ripping the wings off an angel and walking away as God cries above him. 

It feels like ruining all he has. 

When Eiji smiles, the sun parts behind him. The birds start to sing, melancholy and beautiful, and light relents its position as the brightest thing in the universe. When Eiji smiles, Ash thinks about what he could do. He thinks about putting his hands on narrow hips. He thinks about stepping forward, slotting himself near him. He thinks about taking Eiji’s face in his hands and never letting go. But it’s selfish, it’s so selfish it makes him regret ever entertaining the idea. 

It’s too late for him. What he was, when he was small and whole and his insides still human, isn’t there. It’s never coming back, Ash gets that. He does, truly. But when Eiji looks at him, with concern, or with big eyes, or with a face so trusting he finds himself leaning in, he feels what he was grow. But then he blinks, and it’s gone. Back in the past. Back where it’s trapped, eternally; behind Ash. 

He knows Eiji loves him, knows it with all his heart. But that doesn’t make it feel any less wrong. Doesn’t make him feel any less broken.

He remembers Eiji’s explanation of Kintsugi, _golden joinery_ , the art of repairing something broken with something beautiful, something that sparkles and shines and makes you forget that what you’re looking at was ever wrong. _Rebirth,_ Eiji explained, _you treat broken thing as worth celebrating, something to appreciate. Something to remember._

Maybe Kintsugi works in Japan, but not Manhattan, not Ash’s home, where subways fall into disarray and garbage piles on the street, where broken windows go tacky under Warholian paint designs, where staying out too late just means prostitutes and drag queens and booze, not nights on the beach or dancing in the street or making constellations in the sky. Kintsugi can’t work when no one wants to fix it, when you can’t afford even the gold to make it pretty, anyways. 

One day, he’ll explain, let it spill, fragile words from sturdy lips, but not today. Not when Eiji’s all the good in his life. 

“Not now,” he whispers. It’s all he can say. His voice is quick, spitting out words just to make sure they come out and don’t fly back up into his head. “Not now.”

Eiji’s mouth closes. Then opens again, and closes. Opens for a final time.

“One day?” he asks, and Ash nods. 

“One day.”

It feels like a promise. It feels like never letting go. It feels like tying a fated, red string between their fingers and letting it pull. Ash feels heat grow behind his eyes, and he sniffs as he wipes at them. He turns his head away from Eiji, but Eiji only leans in and pushes away his hands, wiping the tears himself. 

“Do not be sad, Ash,” he says. He sounds strong. He brushes his thumb in a circle on Ash’s head, and Ash holds his wrists in his hands as he goes. “Is not goodbye. Not forever. ‘Always,’ you remember?”

Ash nods, chokes out a wet laugh. “Yeah, I remember.”

Eiji smiles, soft. His eyes fill with unshed tears as well. 

“My soul is always with you. No matter where you are. Always.”

Ash looks up at Eiji. Eiji’s hair blows softly in the wind, the black of it stark against the blue of the sky behind him. His eyes are mellow, melancholy but hopeful in a way Ash has never seen before. He loves, loves with all his heart, the boy in front of him. Loves beyond what he can describe, loves beyond words. But he tries his best, tries to explain in the only way he knows how.

“I love you,” he says, like he’s said before, like he never thought he’d have a reason to say, and it’s so simple, so pure, so all-encompassing. So all he needs to really say, because Eiji just _gets_ it, understands with almost nothing. 

Eiji leans forward, placing a kiss on his forehead. “I love you, too. _Ai shiteiru.”_

Ash breathes deep, letting salt and wind fill his nose, and he lets tension wash out of him, lets pressure leave his mind, lets everything that’s not Eiji go. 

_“Ai shiteiru,”_ he says, and even though he can’t speak Japanese, he feels like he knows the phrase, like it was meant for him and him alone. And he means what he says, fully and truly. “ _Ai shiteiru.”_

%%%

Once, when Ash was smaller and blonder and much, much shorter, he broke his finger. 

It’s barely noticeable now. Just a gap between digits when he flattens his hand, and nothing more. But back then, in the heat of the moment, with the sharp sting and pounding ache of bone, it felt as if the entire world had narrowed to just his finger. 

His brother had helped him wrap it straight, set it with a splint, and reminded him to be more careful when he was playing. Ash had nodded slowly, tears pooling along the sides of his face, and he let Griffin ruffle his hair. Then Griff let Ash practice, with his other hand, setting a splint of his own. It came out crooked, wonky and with pieces of tape crumpled at their ends, but passable and fitting for how young he was. 

_You’re gonna get hurt,_ Griff had said. _And I won’t always be there. You’ll have to know how to fix yourself._

When Griffin left— for the first and last time, even if he didn’t know that then— Ash sent him letters in the mail. 

He stole printer paper from the inventory at school, slipped from behind his teacher’s desk, and took a pencil and his best handwriting to detail every insignificant thing that happened to him. Every moment of the first week Griff was gone, recorded on an eleven by eight sheet of white. 

_Scott dug up a beetle at recess and made Elizabeth eat it._

_The mailbox hinge broke off, but Dad fixed it._

_I ran out of pencil at school, so I took one from Dinah’s bookbag. She didn’t notice._

Days that first week passed slow as sludgy soup, trudging along through a thick molasses. All he really did, day in and day out, was read books he’d already read and write his letters to Griff. 

_Dad doesn’t talk about it, but I know what they say at school. They say they sent you there to die._

_Salinger says that when you’re dead, they really fix you up. That people come and put a bunch of flowers on your stomach on a Sunday that smells like rain and concrete. I know you don’t want that. You never really liked getting all cleaned up. So you better not die, because I’ll shove you in a suit and bury you in tulips and roses and lilacs and orchids so high the clouds will taste them. Dead people don’t want flowers, I know that. So that’s what I’ll give you._

When he watched the news Sunday night, bombarded by long, broken streams of footage, American flags offset by helicopters and hospitals wards, Ash could only watch so much before he threw the letters away. Pages and pages of graphite and eraser shavings, ripped into so many and shoved in his garbage can. Then he climbed on top of the kitchen counter, knobby knees first, to pull out white medical tape and cotton balls and wooden splints, and shoved them in an envelope that began to burst at its seams. He slipped them in the mailbox, and each envelope grew thicker as each week passed. Stuffed fatter and fatter with tape and cotton and wood. 

Ideas of missing limbs, gouged out eyes, half-blown off heads skated around Ash’s mind, but only images of broken legs and arms and fingers stuck around. The others seemed so far off, so impossible. Only broken things held any legitimacy, any semblance of suburbia and the real world. He didn’t want Griff stuck with a broken bone, and no splint for it. He prayed every night the supplies got to him and he wouldn’t need them. He didn’t want to be alone, in a world without Griff. 

But Griff died anyways. His body never came home; no suit, no flowers. No goodbye. 

So Ash stopped praying. 

It felt absurdly simple, how fast praying left him. His father wasn’t religious, but Ash went to church a couple of times anyways and he knew noah’s ark and goliath and every betrayal Jesus ever faced. 

Praying didn’t work. Griff died. Ash ran away. 

He’s losing the point, he thinks. Are there ever really points though, he wonders, to childhood anecdotes? Maybe he tells them just to reminisce. Just to see if he can pick out who it is he used to be, if he can find the fragments in his current self. 

Regardless, when Ash lays his hand flat, he can see the only remnants of narrowed fire and pulsing heat, and broken fingers still ache like lost brothers and innocence. 

%%%

Eiji lets his head fall against Ash’s shoulder, and Ash’s shoulders stiffen and his back twist, but only for a moment before he softens back out. Eiji is calm and mellowed, told him right when they met that he was peace, and Ash has never felt that more than he’s feeling now. 

Eiji’s head isn’t hard against him. It’s cushioned by soft hair, and Ash leans his head back against Eiji. His head rests atop Eiji’s, and he lets himself breathe slowly. He grabs Eiji’s hand, their intertwined fingers resting on top of Eiji’s thigh. 

The sun begins to fade over the horizon. Picturesque gradients of red and orange, yellow and pink, drift across the sky in shapeless patterns, tinting the ground and people beneath them. It screams about the passage of time, but Ash doesn’t find it in himself to care. Instead, he cares only of the comfortably still silence between them, broken only by quiet chirping and distant crickets and Eiji’s exhales. Ash knows it’s past five o’clock like he knows that Eiji’s asleep against him. 

They stay like that for a while, Ash’s half-lidded eyes and Eiji’s slow, deep breaths that he finds himself inhaling and exhaling along with. They’re behind the hotel now, shoved in a corner where the grass grows choppy and the fence is swallowed by ivy. His ass is hard against the concrete curb, and the wall behind him offers little reprieve, but he finds that he’s still comfortable. Ash thinks very little, thinks only about how soft Eiji’s cheek is against his shoulder, how smooth his hands are, how utterly calm he is in sleep. 

He doesn’t think about Dino, or Manhattan, or leaving. His mind twirls around Eiji, and Eiji alone. 

Eiji turns a little, groaning in sleep and burying his face in Ash’s shoulder. He feels tingles of electricity, new and warm, run up his body, and he breathes in deep to ground himself. Smells Eiji’s fruity shampoo, far-off and faded chlorine, hints of sunscreen. A distinct blend of the hotel and Eiji that Ash doubts he’ll ever forget.

It’s them, alone. Their last night together. But it doesn’t really feel like the end. It just feels soft, like dipping fingers into honey and smoothing it out. If Ash could, he’d freeze time here. Let the eternal clock run its minutes, sit with Eiji till the sun swallowed the earth. 

It’s hard, sometimes, to be so close to someone you love and know you have to leave them soon. It stings, burns deep, past skin and beyond words. But Ash has read book after book, countless word after word, and if poems and plays and novellas and epics have taught him anything, he knows deep inside that it’s better to have loved and lost, ached and cried, hurt and bled, than to have never loved at all. 

“Ash,” Eiji murmurs into his shoulder, words muffled and heavy with sleep. 

Ash makes a quiet noise in response. 

Eiji digs around in his pocket for a moment. His hands fumble, sloppy, until they grip what he’s searching for. He pulls it out, the corner catching on his jacket, and then he’s placing it in Ash’s chest. 

“For you,” he says. “So you not forget.”

Ash breathes. His heart climbs up, higher and higher up his chest until it catches in his throat. “I could never forget you,” he replies. Eiji keeps his head in the crook of Ash’s shoulder. 

“I know. But just in case.” Ash looks down at what Eiji handed him. It’s one of the photos they took in an alley, the camera turned towards them. Eiji’s eyes are red with the flash, and Ash’s hair blurs into a shapeless pile, but he can’t take his eyes off it. There’s writing on it, too, a scratchy heart and a phone number. Eiji’s and Ash’s name. The date, the year. _1986_. 

Eiji must’ve been keeping this in his pocket, he realizes. The edges are just barely crumpled, and he knows then that Eiji must’ve been saving this for several days, waiting for Ash to tell him he was leaving. 

His breath hitches. Words seem to fail him. 

“I–“

“Shh,” Eiji hushes. “Time for sleep.” He wiggles in further, adjusting till he’s comfortable. He lets out a soft breath and wraps an arm around the back of Ash and grips him with gentle fingers. “Good night, Ash,” he whispers, so sweet Ash can taste the sugar in the words. 

Ash puts his head back against Eiji. Holds the photograph under his hand on the concrete. Closes his eyes, and lets his mind drift off. “Goodnight, Eiji,” he repeats back, and he loves and refuses to let go with all his heart. 

%%%

Ash doesn’t think of time in terms of weeks, or months, or years; he barely thinks of it in days. The now feels so present and solid, he can’t picture anything ever changing, no matter how badly he begs it to.

Leaving Long Island, Eiji’s photograph tucked in his pocket, pushes his mind into the future. He thinks about graduating high school. He thinks about finding a job. He thinks about leaving Dino, one day, when the man’s own putrid core rots him completely or Ash finds it in himself to stop caring about who he was. He thinks about seeing Eiji again, in Japan, where the sky grows pink with blossoms and the air smells of the natto Eiji loves so much. 

He thinks in terms of _not now_ for the first time in a very long time when he leaves Long Island. He thinks about the scrawled phone number, the silly grin Eiji wears, the scratchy heart imprinted above it. 

He thinks about the future, and finds that he does not mind it. Every time he lets Dino kiss him, he thinks about Eiji, and belonging, and where he will be one day. He thinks about the future, reaching and pulling beyond the present, and he thinks about biting ice cream out of hands and singing song lyrics in the street and eating hot dogs in trees and laughing on a boardwalk and being absolutely and truly happy. And soon, Ash thinks, he will be. Soon.

Because 1986 is only one year, in a string of countless many, and he has time. He has the future. He has where he is now, and where he was, and where he will be. 

Time moves slowly, when you long, but Ash can wait. He has waited for many, and he can wait a little longer. 

“I see you enjoyed the vacation,” Dino says from the front seat of his black coupe, going 60 miles an hour down I-495. Ash looks out the window from the passenger side, Dino’s hand on his thigh, and he smiles.

“You wish, old man,” he says, and that’s that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not super happy with this chapter, but if i didn’t post it now i never would’ve posted anything. anyways, thanks so very much for sticking around to the end. it really means a lot and i can’t even begin to explain how much all the kind comments mean to me <3
> 
> i mentioned in the beginning that this fic is inspired by a true thing that happened to my mom. the real story ends with my mom and the dude she met dating, but i guess long distance relationships are a little hard when ur 16, so now they’re facebook friends and he’s an actor, and my moms dating a dude who wasn’t even alive in 1986. so do with that what u will. 
> 
> JDJDJD THAT SOUNDS KINDA DEPRESSING asheiji is soulmate tingz and they will live happily together one day and i will die by that 😔🤚

**Author's Note:**

> ash is so hard to write wtf 
> 
> thanks sm for reading!!! this was really fun to write :) feel free to leave comments and/or kudos!!! i’ve got chapter 3 of this also written, for some reason??? so we shall see when the next chapter gets posted. writing definitely passes time. should update fridays, btw. hopefully!


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